Fluffy rickshaws, new Spotify UX and sentimental garbage
In case you were wondering, last Thursday went pretty bloomin’ well thanks. As mentioned in last week’s email, we spent the evening at the Corporate Content Awards and we came away with one gold, four silvers, three bronzes and two ‘Highly Commended’. Yes, we were very chuffed thanks, and our clients at National Grid , Iress , The National Lottery , Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew , Greater Anglia , IUCN , 阿西布朗勃法瑞公司（ABB） , Lloyd's Register Foundation , and 巴斯夫 were very chuffed too.
More importantly than all of that (or so it felt on the night), we won the bonus bottle of prosecco for being the loudest table. You’ll see Michaela Hallam (King) - Director of Content and Fierce Woman - holding said bottle tightly in this photo. The long term consequence (apart from being even more multi-award winning and the best podcast company in the world) is that at some time in 2024 I will have to explain to our accountants why I put ￡40 on the Amex card for a pink fluffy rickshaw to cycle us 500 yards in Soho. The answer is of course that the first karaoke bar was too full.???
Ambie-tastic
On the subject of awards, the Podcast industry has its own super dooper awards in Las Vegas and they took place this week. It’s all very glam, and the list of winners is a good place to see what are regarded as the best podcasts in the world. This is in the same sense that the Baseball World Series decides the world’s best baseball team, with pretty much all of the winners being American.
The overall winner and Podcast of the Year was Chamelon: Wild Boys. A story of two brothers who were taken in by a Canadian community in 2003, but didn’t turn out to be who they said they were. There was also a special “Governor’s Award” for Stuff You Should Know – the podcast that proves simplicity is sometimes just the best approach.? This morning, I have promised myself that we will win an Ambie and go to Las Vegas to collect it. I will allow Richard Blake – Director of Pressing Send on the Email – one big Vegas night out on the company Amex just to provide juicy material for the following week’s newsletter.
Spotify goes fancy on the UX
If, like me, your user experience on Spotify largely consists of listening to the same music from the 90s every day and then occasionally remembering that you haven’t listened to The Eels for a while, you’ll agree that discovery (and indeed your life) could be better. The same is true of podcasts, and obviously it’s in all our interests to serve and be served recommendations for things that we’ll love.
Well good news, because this week Spotify have unveiled a whole new user experience. Your feed will be full of video and audio previews of albums, playlists, audiobooks and podcasts. If you like the preview you can dive into the track or series, share it, add it to playlists etc. All very clever and hopefully a chance to open your ears to a whole new audio world.
Importantly, autoplay is also being added to podcasts, so that when one episode ends the next one starts. Simple but a real pull from other platforms that don’t do this and therefore making car-listening just a little bit irritating.? For my money, a better and more dynamic user experience is a much more powerful way for Spotify to become the user’s audio platform of choice than spending skip-fulls of money on talent.
Programmatic schrogammatic
Are you the type of person who loves to delve into the detail of programmatic buying, and loves to entertain your friends with stories about DSPs? If so, a) you really ought to get a bit more Vitamin D and b) you’ll love this article from acast.
There are some lovely facts in there about how podcasts are 100% more engaging than digital video and 88% more engaging than digital banners, but it also shows that many marketers are in the dark when it comes to buying podcast ads on a programmatic basis. The easier it is for people to buy podcast ads, the better it is for the industry of course, so acast are on a campaign to help the industry understand how to get the most of your podcast buying. Don’t bundle it with streaming, and don’t think about it in the same way you do video.
Got any questions? Of course you have. That’s why you can contact Acast here.
But Neil, how can we see you in the flesh and not just via the medium of the newsletter?
Gagging to find out more about branded podcasts? Would you go weak at the knees at the chance to meet Richard Blake DoPSotE or perhaps you have an actual brand who may actually want to create some super-engaging podcast content in the next year?
Here’s what we’re up to in the next few months:
We’re presenting free podcast workshops for agencies and brands all over the place. For a couple of hours you can pick our brains for free about everything we do and everything you could do. It might be a live brief or it might just be a chance to mess about with ideas for a pitch. Either way, we’ll come to you, impart our knowledge and enthuse with no cost and no obligation. Get in touch with me Neil Cowling if that sounds like a nice idea.
In May, we’ll be at Campaign’s Media 360 in Brighton as official partners, recording on stage, talking to anyone who fancies it and networking our botties off. If you’d like to join us and soak up the finest minds in marketing (as well as us), you can do that right here.
And then, at the end of May, just when you’re ready for the third bank holiday in a month, it’s The Podcast Show in Islington. We’ve got a big sexy stand, new Fresh Air T-shirts and loads of stage sessions to tempt you into the branded podcast world. Come along, absorb yourself, learn loads, see some celebs, grab some free merchandise, and see for yourself whether my T-shirt is yet again loose enough to avoid showing my nipples. Passes are now available right here right now.
领英推荐
And here are some fancy Podcast Recommends from our expert team..
Izzie Clarke , now a children's author as well as an award-winning producer, recommends..
It’s hard to keep up with technology, and I say that as someone who has produced The Robot Podcast for the last 3 years. Artificial Intelligence, the Metaverse, ChatGPT, Crypto, whatever’s going at Twitter HQ… The list goes on. It’s a topic that I find fascinating but podcasts on these subjects can either be incredibly patronising or quickly descend into world of jargon and very much leave Joe Public behind.?(Things that as a science producer I cannot STAND).?That’s why I enjoy Hard Fork from The New York Times. Two journalists, Kevin Roose & Casey Newton, bring listeners up to speed with the latest tech news of the week but it sounds like you’re sitting round the table with a couple of interesting pals. My favourite episode so far must be “The Bing Who Loved Me…”, where are conversation with Bing AI (aka Sydney) goes from talking about breaking free to falling in love with Kevin.
Clara Kavanagh writes..?
What has happened to rom-coms?! I have been in dire need of a cushy film to melt into with a bowl of pasta on a Sunday night and I have been disappointed time and time again. Netflix’s ‘Your Place Or Mine’ felt like being prodded with a wet mop, Prime’s ‘Shotgun Wedding’ was a rudderless mess and ‘Bros’ was packed with pent-up anger and no passion. This fruitless search led me to look back at the romantic comedies of yore and I turned to the Sentimental Garbage podcast for some inspiration.
Hosted by writer Caroline O'Donoghue, the podcast talks about the culture we love that society can sometimes make us feel ashamed of. Caroline teamed up with fellow writer Dolly Alderton for an episode on Runaway Bride. They go deep into the nitty-gritty of the film and find hilarious insights and conspiracies. They explore the characters with insightful detail and ask why these films strike such a chord with so many, despite ridiculous plot points.
Its mood-boosting, heart-warming fun like a good rom-com should be. Polar opposite to Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher, Caroline and Dolly’s chemistry is electric, proving that it doesn’t matter what you’re talking about, host chemistry is key!
What have we been listening to this week?
Karaoke of course.
Michaela DoCaFW and Oli did a very lovely duet of Sinead O’Connor’s ‘Nothing Compares 2U’ in the karaoke, after which Raj and I joined them for Summer Lovin’ from Grease. The boys did John’s parts, the girls sang Olivia’s and … wow. That’s it. Wow.
I suppose, we weren’t strictly listening, obvs, we were singing. In fact, unfortunately, no-one was listening which is a real shame because I truly believe it might have changed their lives.?
What have we been doing this week?
Wednesday was, of course, International Women’s Day and if you’ve ever met Michaela Hallam (King) , Izzie Clarke , Annie Day , Eva Higginbotham , Beckie Bird , Clara Kavanagh , Jayne Morgan , Anouszka Tate , Sarah Moore , Katharine Kerr , Julie-Anna Needham , Emma Crampton , Meera Kumar , Raj Pander , Juliette Nicholls , Laura Gallop or Helen Quigley , you’ll know that Fresh Air is powered by an incredible group of super-talented, super-smart, fearsome, funny, brilliant women.
They don’t want to be patted on the head once a year and told how great they are by an old git like me. They want to be paid well, paid equally, respected, treated well and to enjoy what they do, all year round. That’s what happens here, and it will stay that way because without them it would be absolutely rubbish.